Interview

"sure, sure," PAUSE, "oh, Yeah" PAUSE, "I do have regrets,"

I can remember just months ago talking with only a handful of high school students asking them if they had any regrets, they said," no, Don't have regrets because every decision I have made has made me who I am," I was feeling clever and did not know what came over me, so I replied,"What if you don't like who you are?"

"sure, sure," PAUSE, "oh, Yeah" PAUSE, "I do have regrets,"

Now even more months forward I try to sum up my experience, but I wish that LA could sum up its experience with me. Yeah, sure, when I drove into LA it was my dream, it was what I had always wanted to do. Honestly, coming here had nothing to do with LA, it had everything to do with me. So I wonder, after ten weeks of having me here, does LA have any regrets.

I can imagine LA saying something like this:

"I wish we could have gotten to know each other much sooner. I wish you would have cared for me. I wish you didn't talk bad about me. I wish you saw me as a whole, as a thriving body of 12 million. I wish you would have seen me as Allan, as Dan, as Jose, as Ruhan, as Musako, as Ivan, as me, as every small part, significant. I wish you saw in my broken pieces potential friends. If I were a pool I wish you would have made your mark in me, a splash, But, even much more important, a splash in Allen's, Dan's, Jose's, Ruhan, and Musako's and Ivan's lives.

SPLASH

The city of Angels would continue:

"I could tell in the beginning, you weren't about me at all, that hurt, because you were here for me. But" PAUSE, "you transformed before my eyes." PAUSE, "and we saw each other, you began to dream of me as a city of light because you dreamed of pieces of my city as light." LA might end by saying, "we sure have changed, at least slightly since we met, perhaps more is going on here than you and me, I'm really glad you noticed it wasn't about you."

I would respond to LA, "I know." naturally since I am the one who made up LA's dialogue.

But there is so much dialogue that i did not make up that I will hold forever as life changing, changing in the sense that I am different, not in the sense that I am completely different. Conversations on the roof of the building, in the car, on the grass in Pasadena, in the office (though I did not know the office well). Dialogue on the APX lawn at USC, and at the white tables at URM.

"there is so much that I would change about BLANK" as I utter this phrase I know it reveals how I have been changed much. When I was living the things I would now change, I didn't think they should be changed. But they should, now I know, now they are SPACE changed.

God has been talking with me. I can recall a person asking Clive Staples Lewis, "why do you pray?" Lewis answered, "I pray not because I think it changes God but because it changes me."

OH how I will run, Yes Run!
Run for a prize, Yes the Prize!
PAUSE
For someone else, Yes I will Run!
For a City, for a nation, for a person, for humanity, I will not run for me!
Yes,
PAUSE
Christ runs through me.
Like the nervous system that controls the muscles, the motion, the feeling of the bottom of my feet against my soft shoes, like the heart that pounds out of my chest, and the lungs that cling to air, and the brain that rocks. Christ will run through me.
OH how He will run, Yes Run!
Run for a prize, Yes the Prize!
PAUSE
For someone else, Yes I will Run!
For a city, for a nation, for a person, for humanity. He will run for me!
It will be fast, it will hurt, it will be dangerous.
PAUSE
Oh Yeah
PAUSE
I do have regrets.
Yet
He has made me who I am
He has changed me through you, LA.

It isn't about SLASH for me, it is about SLASH for you.